


Bad Things Happen Bingo: Appendicitis

by taylor_tut



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Appendicitis, Fever, Gen, Sibling Bonding, Sick Character, Sick Klaus Hargreeves, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-25 14:26:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: For bad things happen bingo on tumblr: Klaus has appendicitis and everyone underreacts until it's really bad.





	Bad Things Happen Bingo: Appendicitis

**** Diego reached out to shake Klaus’ shoulder and rolled his eyes when Klaus shoved him off. He’d fallen asleep on the couch under several blankets, all of them stolen from the rooms of his siblings who weren’t sleeping there, and was sweating under them. 

“Hey, Klaus,” he called, “you’ve gotta get up, bro. Luther asked us to meet in the study ten minutes ago.”

Klaus’ eyes fluttered open, but rather than sitting up, he only curled further in on himself. 

“Tell Luther he can shove his meeting up his ass,” Klaus muttered, and Diego rolled his eyes. 

“That doesn’t even make sense,” he pointed out. 

“I don’t care,” Klaus argued. “Not moving.” 

“Then the meeting is coming to you,” Luther’s voice boomed from the doorway of the living room. The words seemed to be a kind accommodation but his tone suggested otherwise. “You’re not getting out of it.”

Klaus shivered hard and nuzzled into the blankets further despite that Diego could see that his face was flushed from the warmth of what was probably four comforters and a robe. 

“Not trying to,” Klaus mumbled. “Just can’t sit up.” 

“Why not?” Allison asked, taking a step toward Klaus. It was good that it was her. Diego would have done it, but Luther would have shut him down, told him that Klaus was being dramatic and that Diego was fueling the fire by indulging it. Allison, however, he’d never curtail. 

“Stomach’s killing me,” he moaned. Allison frowned, made a little sympathetic cooing noise. 

“How many times do we have to tell you to stop eating things out of dumpsters?” Five asked. 

“I didn’t,” Klaus maintained weakly. “Haven’t eaten anything at all today. Too nauseous.” 

Luther sighed. “Well, there’s your problem,” he oversimplified—he always did one or the other, either watering down a problem into nothing or blowing up a non-issue into a catastrophe. He reached out and plucked a banana from Five’s hand, not deterred in the slightest by Five’s cursing in protest, and tossed it to—or rather, AT—Klaus, off whose body it bounced. He groaned a little in irritation but didn’t move to eat it and no one was going to force him. 

“Alright,” Luther began, “we need to get a plan in place. How are we going to figure out what causes the apocalypse?”

“I have a few ideas,” Five admitted, “but I can’t chase all my leads by myself.”

“Whatever you need,” Allison said reflexively, “we’ll do. What’s first?” 

Five barked a few commands for the group and Diego listened, watching each sibling as they were addressed and keeping one eye on Klaus, who never once looked up from his blanket nest. He’d anticipated Klaus being difficult about waking up, but it was definitely unusual for him to stay quiet for so long, and even stranger that he would fall asleep once more despite the racket in the room. When he suddenly sat up, Diego thought it might have something to do with the fact that Luther had just said, “well, mine was always the longest,” in response to a response about lists of childhood chores and that Klaus wouldn’t be able to leave the innuendo alone, but one look at his face negated that theory. His eyes were vacant and his face was tight with pain. 

“Klaus?” Allison prompted, drawing everyone’s attention away from the apocalypse conversation. In an instant, Klaus was gone, rushing off to the bathroom. No one chased after him—Diego thought it would be best to give him a few minutes before they did so. 

“What the hell is up with him?” Luther asked. Five shrugged. 

“Withdrawal? Cravings? Drugs?” he proposed. “Who knows? Anyway, we’ve got more pressing things to worry about.” 

The conversation went back to business, but Diego couldn’t stop thinking about how strangely Klaus was acting. When nearly ten minutes had gone by without a peep from him, he finally caved. 

“I’m going to check on Klaus,” he announced. Luther huffed a little. 

“I’m sure he’s fine,” he said, and Diego nodded, throwing his hands in the air in mock defeat. 

“I’m sure he is,” he admitted, “but I just want to make sure.” 

Diego excused himself from the room and headed toward the nearest bathroom, where the door was closed but unlocked. He knocked a few times, feeling his heart sink when he didn’t get an answer. 

“Klaus,” he called through the door, “you okay in there?” 

A faint moan answered him, which immediately shifted his mood from slightly-mocking concern to real fear. 

“Open up,” he demanded, “or I’m coming in.” When the only response was the sound of Klaus throwing up, Diego winced. He hovered for a few more minutes outside the door while he listened to Klaus flush the toilet and wash his hands and probably rinse out his mouth, too. The door opened to reveal a pale and exhausted-looking Klaus who wavered slightly as he brushed past Diego and headed for the couch once more. Diego steadied him by one elbow as he walked dizzily to the living room. 

“You sick, bro?” Diego asked, and Klaus shot him a glare. 

“No, this is just a hobby of mine,” he replied bitterly. 

Diego rolled his eyes—Klaus had always been snippy when he wasn’t feeling well. He reached out to feel his brother’s forehead and his hand was smacked away. 

“I’m just trying to see if you have a fever,” Diego explained. 

“It’s just food poisoning,” Klaus bit back. 

“You already said that you haven’t eaten today, and I know you barely ate yesterday, either. Where does it hurt?”

Klaus pulled away from his grip to walk into the living room, where his siblings were still convening, by himself and nuzzled back under the blankets on the couch. Luther gave Diego a questioning look, but all he could do was shrug, since he’d gotten a surprisingly small amount of information from his usually eager-to-complain, ready-to-overshare brother. 

Klaus had his eyes closed once more, curled even further around his abdomen in a way that left no room to assume that the pain was anything less than agonizing. 

Half an hour went by of arguing, planning, and pointedly ignoring Klaus’ pathetic couch nap. In a rare show of empathy for how Klaus was feeling, Luther had asked if he wanted to just go back to bed since he was undeniably ill, but Klaus didn’t reply. That had pissed Luther off just as much as it had piqued Diego’s concern. At this point, he was just waiting for the inevitable dramatic incident.

The incident came in the form of Klaus’ arm shooting out from under the layers of blankets to grab Diego’s arm. 

“Diego,” he said urgently, and Five was quick to reach for the small trash can next to his own seat, handing it to Diego. However, when he tried to put it beneath Klaus, he shoved it away. 

“What do—”

“Something’s wrong,” he managed through a tight jaw. His hand was gripping hard on Diego’s forearm. The complete pallor of his face and the voice devoid of all humor, two things that no one was really used to seeing from Klaus, had everyone out of their seats. 

“I’ll find mom and Pogo,” Allison said, darting from the room. Luther knelt down beside the couch to lift him, nearly dropping him when the slightest touch elicited a cry of pain. Though he knew it was unintentional and could see the guilt in Luther’s face, Diego still felt a protective instinct kick in, one which autopiloted him to push Luther away from Klaus’ coiled form. Five was beside him now, too, reaching forward to peel back the blankets concurrently with Diego reaching for his forehead to try to get a read on his fever. Wide, terrified eyes darted blankly across the room without any recognition as Klaus batted weakly but with no lack of panic at both of his siblings. 

“Get away,” he argued deliriously. “Don’t touch me.” Diego threw his hands up in surrender and took a step back and Five copied him. 

“Klaus, do you know where you are?” he asked calmly. “Do you know who we are?” 

The questions proved to be a little overwhelming for him, so he didn’t answer, but it didn’t appear to matter because Allison was entering the room again, trailed by Pogo and Grace. 

“What on Earth is happening in here?” Grace asked in her half-scolding, mostly flat tone. 

“Klaus is throwing up and running a fever,” Diego provided when Klaus didn’t speak up. 

“He’s in a lot of pain, too,” Five added, uncharacteristically concerned about something that Diego wouldn’t have thought he’d have even registered. Well, he supposed that if Five had been in tune with the needs of half a mannequin for the past thirty years, he had to be pretty perceptive. 

Grace was apparently less threatening than the others because Klaus let her reach out and press on his abdomen, eventually reaching a spot that made him wince and then releasing it, which made him shout. She and Pogo locked eyes meaningfully but didn’t say anything to one another. 

“He needs to be moved to the infirmary, potentially for surgery,” Grace announced. “This could be his appendix. Luther, dear, can you—”

“He won’t let me touch him,” Luther replied, unphased by the severity of the condition that seemed to catch the other siblings off guard. Grace nodded. 

“Okay, then. Diego, do you think he’ll let you help him there?” 

There was only one way to find out, but when he tried to coax Klaus into a standing position, he found that apparently he was allowed to touch him. With some help from Grace, he stood Klaus up on his feet. It was amazing and frightening how much he’d deteriorated in half an hour—he’d been walking of his own volition just a little under an hour ago, but now he needed someone to support almost his full weight to even get off the couch. 

“He’ll be alright,” Pogo reassured the room, answering the question that everyone was too focused to even ask. From a young age, they’d been conditioned to face fear head-on, to walk toward it rather than away; that was the entire purpose of the umbrella academy. They were the ones to run into rather than away from a burning building or a gunpoint robbery. However, Diego still felt his shoulders relax at Pogo’s promise, and he knew that the others probably felt the same way. Klaus always bounced back, and this time would be no exception. He forced himself to think that way as he guided him to the infirmary to be cared for properly. 


End file.
